


Denglength of Love

by Daniella Plenti Raven-SAMone MyDesireé (TheAstronomyMod)



Category: Interpol
Genre: BAD FIC THROWDOWN, Bandom - Freeform, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 18:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2592371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAstronomyMod/pseuds/Daniella%20Plenti%20Raven-SAMone%20MyDesire%C3%A9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel Kessler, King of the Mods, undergrad student at NYU, finds himself fascinated by the tall, elegant Goth in his philosophy class. But when he invites the mysterious Goth to join his band, he finds himself drawn into a teenage turfwar between the Goths and the Preps, lead by the charismatic Lacrosse Team Captain, Paul Julian Banks.</p><p>THIS IS A PURPOSEFULLY BAD, TERRIBLE, AWFUL, CLICHE-RIDDEN NIGHTMARE OF A SLASH-FIC, WRITTEN DELIBERATELY BADLY IN ORDER TO COMPETE IN A BAD-FIC THROWDOWN.</p><p>Warning: it is BAAAAAAAD. (Hopefully hilariously bad, but perhaps just not-very-good bad.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Are You Gonna Use That Pen?

"Are you gonna use that pen?" Kessler had just been caught staring, and blurted out the first thing that sprang to his mind.

The tall Goth in philosophy class stared back aggressively, his ebony-black eyes like two fiery lumps of coal, the heat of his stare so heavy that Kessler blushed furiously and dropped his own gaze, but still, even with his eyes averted, he could still feel the weight of his classmate's stare. When he risked another glance, he noticed that not only was the Goth still staring, but he had actually picked the ballpoint off his own desk and was extending it gently towards him.

"Thanks," muttered Kessler, fluttering his eyelashes gently as he reached to take the pen, but as he took one end, the Goth refused to let go of the other. There was a slight tussle as Kessler dumbly tried to work out what was happening, but as the Goth slowly started to smile a wicked grin, he realised: he'd been taken for a fool. "Come on, man," he sighed, refusing to let go, even as the Goth tugged at the other end. "Just let me have the pen."

"How badly do you want it?" the Goth asked with a leer, tugging sharply at it, as if it were a fishing lure to catch little mod-boys.

Kessler was about to protest when a shadow loomed large above them both. "Mister Dengler," barked Dr Lerner, the terrifying professor who taught Freshman Philosophy at NYU. "...and Mister Kessler. Do you have something to add to the class that is more important than Zeno's Paradox?"

"N-n-n-no, sir," stuttered Kessler, releasing his hold on the ballpoint.

"Can you perhaps explain Zeno's paradox to the class, then?" Dr Lerner persisted.

Kessler's jaw flopped around like a limp fish as he panicked - he had tried at least twice to read the assigned passage of Plato, but Greek philosophy just slid off his mind like butter off a drunken midnight waffle from the breakfast menu at Denny's.

"Zeno's paradox is a passage from the Parmenides, demonstrating the futility of the reductio ad absurdum methodology, indicating that all motion is illusionary if the praxis is continued to its logical conclusion," the Goth answered glibly, with a self-satisfied smirk, as Kessler felt his blood pressure finally returning to normal.

"Humph," snorted Dr Lerner, though he was apparently satisfied. "Very good, Dengler." As he turned back to the class, he suddenly caught sight of the clock. "Unfortunately, that's all we have time for today. But I want 500 words on Plato's views on Monism by next Monday - including you, Mister Kessler..."

Kessler sighed deeply and rolled his eyes as he started to pack up his notebooks and thrust them into the messenger bag he used to carry his schoolbooks. 500 words on Plato? It might as well be 5000, for all the sense it made. 500 words on the new Blur album, that he could do with ease. 500 words on the philosophy of Stereolab, now, that he might even manage, as Stereolab's lyrics seemed to help Marxism make some kind of sense. But Marxism would not be appearing for another 6 months, and there seemed to be an endless parade of bearded Greeks and forbidding Germans with impossible names to be digested first. He had got to drop the class before it dragged his GPA down into the gutter, and took his scholarship with it. But not before he managed to exchange more than a phatic conversation with the intriguing Goth who had been sitting next to him at the back of the class for the past three weeks.

Abruptly, something bounced off Kessler's chest - hot damn, that hurt! But as he looked down into his lap, he saw a black ballpoint come to rest between his thighs. As he looked up, he saw the flash of ebony eyes, and he swore the Goth actually winked at him as he disappeared from the classroom in a flurry of black velvet and leather.

"Hey!" cried Kessler, leaping to his feet and following, darting between the desks on his way to the door. What had the old prof called him? Dengler. The Goth in his philosophy class had been haunting his thoughts for weeks now, with that piercing jet-black gaze and his black-black, militaristic clothes and his vaguely fascistic jack boots - but it wasn't just his clothes, though they were striking; it was the way the Goth carried himself, an inch and a half taller, than anyone else on campus, and smirking, as if he were in on some vast cosmic joke - that he did not deign to share with the rest of the universe. With his long skinny legs and his long, loping gait, he was already halfway down the hall, and Kessler had to break into a trot to catch up with him. "Wait up, Dengler! I wanna talk to you..."

The Gothic Prince of Darkness whirled around in a flurry of black leather, eyebrows raised as if demanding an explanation for this intrusion. His face was all angles, cheekbones, jawline, pointed sideburns and a severe, black-dyed, side-parted hairstyle like something off a Kraftwerk album. For the second time in less than ten minutes, Kessler found himself totally at a loss for words. He had been planning this out for weeks now, how he would approach his attractive classmate, and now the moment was upon him, he felt his knees turning to jelly. Come on, Kessler, it's now, or never.

"Look, I've seen you around. I was just wondering if you played anything..." he blurted out, without wit or preamble.

Dengler's expression corroded with contempt. " _Play_?" he snapped. "I detest sports! Jocks and... _preps_... I spit on their graves. Scourge of the earth."

"No, no, no," Kessler protested, shrugging apologetically. "I meant play, as in... play an instrument?"

The Goth's eyes suddenly lit up. There. Now he had got his attention.

"See... I'm in a band?" That wasn't entirely a lie. Kessler got together with his drum-playing roommate once a week to bash out thinly-veiled Jam covers. "We need a bass player. You look like the kind of guy who's in a band... or at least the kind of guy who _should_ be in a band?" Dengler's expression had changed so completely that Kessler knew he had taken the right tack. "You don't, by any chance, play bass, do you? Or, at least, would you be willing to?"

"I can play anything," Dengler snorted contemptuously. "I can play bass, I can play guitar, I can play keyboards..." He paused as if considering this - and Kessler, again, felt the full weight of that curious onyx gaze. "What kind of music do you play?"

Kessler gulped nervously. He hated this question, more than any other. Quickly, he took in the Goth's clothes, the black shirt, military, with epaulettes and silver metal detailing, the black tie, the tight black trousers, hot damn, yes, those were very tight black velvet trousers that left little to the imagination, rolled up to reveal knee-high combat boots. Hot damn, no, don't look at the trousers, not even at that tempting velvety nap, that seemed to invite touching or even stroking. He had asked a question, and those imperious onyx eyes were demanding an answer. "Um." said Kessler. "We play, like... um... angular, kinda, post-punk, kinda... Indie? Rock?"

"Indie-rock?" retorted Dengler, pronouncing the words with an air of disgust as palpable as the expression of contempt on his angular face. "I loathe indie-rock." With another flurry of velvet and black leather, and a toss of his black-dyed side-fringe, he turned on his heel and started to stride away.

Kessler dashed after him, terrified that he was losing his quarry, dogging his heels like a persistent terrier. "So what kind of music do you listen to, then?"

"You won't have heard of my kind of music," Dengler shrugged, with exaggerated, elegant, gothic nonchalance.

"Try me."

"Tune into my radio show, Theatrum Aethereum, if you really want to know. Every Tuesday night at 10. I play... Ethereal, Dark-Wave, Bat-Cave, all kinds of stuff."

"So you're a Goth," Kessler asserted.

That stopped Dengler in his tracks. "I am _not_ a Goth," he snapped.

Kessler broke into the kind of wide, puppy-dog grin that all his friends found irresistible. "Peter Murphy's Paradox. The harder a band denies that they are Goth, the higher the chances that they are, actually, Goth."

"You've heard of Peter Murphy," Dengler mused, the skin stretched tight over his cheekbones growing taut as his face looking torn.

"I've heard of a lot more than Peter Murphy," Kessler boasted. "You like Ethereal-wave, like, what? You mean, like, This Mortal Coil and His Name Is Alive? Or do you mean, like Miranda Sex Garden, Black Tape For A Blue Girl, and Love Spirals Downward? Or are you more into the industrial and EBM end of things, like, y'know, Skinny Puppy and KMFDM?"

It was Dengler's turn to look impressed and more than slightly surprised. "How do you know about these artists." A suspicious look crossed his ebony eyes. "Do you listen to my show?"

Kessler shrugged his I-know-more-than-you-think shrug. It was time to break out his ace in the hole. "My older brother lives in England, he's features editor for the NME, one of the biggest music magazines in Britain..."

"I know what the NME is, thank you," Dengler huffed, though his irritation seemed to be matched by his curiosity.

"Well, he sends me all kinds of demos, promos... I get tickets to pretty much any of the new British bands that come over here that I might want to hear... So yeah. If I wanna go to a 4AD showcase night at, like, Webster Hall, I just phone my brother, and hey presto, I got tickets." It was not the kind of thing Kessler normally boasted about - hell, most kids at NYU had never heard of 4AD or the NME - but Dengler, for once, looked genuinely interested.

"What did you say your band was called?" Dengler probed.

"We don't really have a name yet..." Kessler started to explain, but as they exited the building through the imposing front door and down the short flight of steps, the pair of them were both caught up in a flurry of noise and activity, as a stream of young men came jogging across the square, shouting aloud and waving lacrosse sticks.

"Ugh!" ejaculated Dengler, physically recoiling as he leapt to one side of the path to let the exuberant athletes pass. "Preps! Jocks! I absolutely loathe their kind!"

But Kessler hardly heard him, as the pair of them were both so utterly captivated by the sight of the young man bringing up the rear of the Lacrosse Team, running lazily, almost in slow motion, like the opening sequence of Chariots of Fire, though he was jogging through the dirty, dog-shit streets of New York, and not the pristine, white-sand beaches of Scotland. Even the heavens seemed to smile upon this blessed captain of the Lacrosse Team, parting the clouds to allow a single beam of sunlight to light up the flaxen blond hair of the prep's angelic head, as he cradled the ball in his lacrosse stick, and in the back of Kessler's head, he almost heard music playing softly in the background, and had the mental image of puppies - beautiful, shaggy golden retriever puppies - ambling out of the surrounding park and gambolling towards the beautiful young man to rub themselves against his strong, bare, well-muscled, shapely legs.

Dengler glared, his face dark as a storm-cloud, as the beautiful young captain ran up the steps towards them. And yet the blond man's smile was as wide and calm and open and accepting as the Goth's face was furious. The exquisite Adonis of Washington Square was dressed all in white, like a preppy angel; a white Lacoste polo shirt, a white headband that struggled to contain his flowing blond hair, and a tiny pair of white tennis shorts that left his long, lean, pink-golden thighs exposed to the elements, and Dengler's disdainful gaze.

As the golden young man seemed to jog in slow motion up the steps, and disappeared into the murky, modernist depths of the campus centre, the spell was broken, a cloud recovered the sun, the celestial music ceased and Dengler grumbled loudly. "I absolutely despise that man."

"Do you know him?" gasped Kessler, still a little breathtaken by the youth's beauty.

"How do you not?" sniped Dengler. Kessler shook his head quickly, though he had an awesome, fateful sense that he would, very soon. "Paul Julian Banks. Captain of the Lacrosse team. Pitcher of NYU's varsity baseball team. Junior Varsity basketball team forward. Champion of Men's and Mixed doubles at tennis..."

"For a guy who loathes sports, you sure seem to know a lot about him," Kessler pointed out. Dengler shot him a filthy look that almost silenced him. "So... what? He's some big shot sports scholarship kid, or something?"

"As if!" roared Dengler, sounding almost personally offended, puffing out his skinny chest beneath his military epaulettes, and pulling himself up to his full height - an intimidating 6'2" that, to be fair, made Kessler feel a great deal shorter than his rather less impressive 5'6". "His father is Vice President of Ford Mexico. Donates an endowment of three million pesos to NYU every year to ensure that little Paulie gets an education - though he is never seen in class, and constantly on the playing field. That man is, in short, an offence to our school fees!"

Kessler decided, wisely, to keep mum about the fact that he didn't pay school fees, and had in fact been accepted at NYU on a very hefty scholarship, while he had succeeded in guilting his divorced parents into splitting the rent on a very lush dorm room, so his tenure in Greenwich Village was very economical indeed. But Dengler didn't need to know that, not yet, at least.

But as they trudged across Washington Square, Dengler returned to the topic at hand. "So about this band, then. You said you needed a bass player."

They stopped at the corner of 8th Street, as Dengler made as if to go East, towards St Mark's Place, and Kessler jerked his head West, back towards his dorm. "Look, we're having a a bit of a party - well, not so much a party, more of a get together, maybe a jam session - at my dorm room on Saturday. Why don't you drop by? We'll see how we get on."

For a moment, Dengler just stared, as if evaluating him, taking in the cheap, ill-fitting charity-shop suit that Kessler had taken to wearing during his freshman year of college, the curly mop of hair that refused to conform to any known hairstyle, the long, moddish sideburns he had been so proud to finally be able to grow, but, finally, he seemed to pass muster, as the Goth nodded sharply and agreed. "Alright. I'll stop by. What's your address?"


	2. King of the Mods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the intriguing Goth from Kessler's philosophy class turns up to his Saturday night dorm party, Kessler gets a little more than he planned for.

"So I've finally found us a bass player," Kessler told his roommate - and drummer - as the pair of them did a cursory, once-over tidy of their tiny, subdivided dorm room. The grand, pre-war dormitory had such impressive double-height ceilings that the pair of them had built a mezzanine loft space where they slept and studied, leaving the open floor below set up as an impromptu rehearsal space featuring a full drum-kit and a couple of amps. In any other University, this amount of racket might have been an expellable offence, but  Kessler and his roommate Greg had both deliberately asked to be housed in the performing arts dorm, and all the music majors on the floor not only didn't complain, they often dropped by to have a quick jam on drums or guitar. At NYU, there were dozens of drummers and hundreds of guitarists - but bassists? They were rarer than a virgin on the Jersey Shore. Kessler could not believe his luck.

"Better not be another fucken funk-punk Flea wannabe like that last idiot you got," Greg grumbled, even as he went to answer the knock at their dorm-room door.

"We are the mods!" answered a chorus of voices, as the party guests arrived all in a pack, a gang of about half a dozen lads, and maybe 2 or 3 girls, all dressed in Burton suits, Fred Perrys, Sta-Prest trousers and desert boots. "We are the mods, we are the mods, we are the, we are the, we are the mods!"

"Yes, yes, mods rule OK," agreed Kessler, throwing up his hands as his rowdier friends ruffled his hair and pressed pints of Newcastle Brown Ale on him.

"Danny-boy!" howled a ginger lad in oxblood doc martens and a harrington jacket. "King of the Mods!"

Kessler grinned and blushed, brushing down the lapels of his suit as he accepted the compliment. It was a new suit - well, new to him - silver grey with an almost imperceptible pinstripe, that had set him back nearly forty bucks at Antique Boutique, but, paired with a black shirt and a white skinnier-than-skinny-tie, he thought he more than lived up to his nickname. "Put on a film, Jimmy," he instructed.

"Quadrophenia!" howled one side of the room. "Starshaped!" howled the other.

"How about... The Knack And How To Get It?" Kessler suggested, to blank looks all around. OK, so you know how particular Dengler appeared to be about goth bands? Well, that was Kessler when it came to 60s films. "Trust me on this one, it's totally mod, a total Groovy Movie - you'll love it - and if you don't, we can always put on Darling or Smashing Time..."

Even the opening sequence of the film roused a cheer from his assembled friends. "We are the mods, we are the mods, we are the, we are the, we are the..." they rumbled convivially in the background as Kessler stuck his head out into the corridor, looked up and down his dorm floor with a sinking, slightly disappointed pall over his heart. It was true, all of his friends were assembled, and everyone was having a _smashing time_ , but really, there was only one pair of jet-black eyes he really wanted to see, to make his night complete.

Kessler tried to make the best of it. He dimmed the overhead bulb, put on mood lighting, a lava lamp, some christmas tree lights, then a spliff went round, and the gathering grew more merry. The first can of Newkie went down smooth, to be followed by a second, and then a third, as they finished watching The Knack and moved on to Privilege, another of Kessler's fabled groovy movies. So he was kneeing on the floor in front of the television set, fussing with the video machine, trying to rewind to the correct counter for the start of the film, when an ominous, booming knock resounded round the small, smoke-filled room like the tolling of a great iron funeral bell. For a moment, Kessler wondered who the hell it could be, if the movie was too loud, if his friends were too rowdy, but Greg, as he was closer, peeled off the futon and went to answer the door.

Slowly, the room fell silent, all around him, even as Kessler fussed with the VCR, until he was aware that all was deathly quiet except the nervous tittering of one of the girls. So Kessler looked up, and saw Death, silhouetted against the lights of the corridor, filling the doorway like a huge, black bird of prey.

For a horrible half a second, his heart seemed to stop, cowed by the presence of that tall, skeletally thin black-clad presence, but then he heard a familiar voice as Death, still faceless and framed by the too-bright lights of outside, started to speak. "I'm looking for a young man named Kessler. I have reason to believe that he rooms here? He invited us to a party tonight."

Greg swallowed nervous. "Oh. Dan - yeah, he's here. _Danny_..." His voice was as tight with tension as if our party had just been invaded by the entire Lacrosse team.

Death stepped forward into the room, and Kessler felt his breath catch in his throat, as if his tie were suddenly cinched in too tight, stopping his heart from pumping blood about his tiny frame. For the great scare-crow was in point of fact Dengler, but dressed very differently from how he appeared in Philosophy 101, as the military epaulettes had been swapped for... well, there was no polite way of putting it. The man was wearing a dress. Well, no, on closer inspection, as Kessler moved forward to greet his new friend, it turned out to be a priest's cassock, a full-length black garment with a proper white dog-collar, worn casually over a pair of black leather bondage trousers. But it was the man's face that attracted his attention, like moths attract flames, his blocky features rendered oddly beautiful by the application of white, pancake foundation, the hint of violet-coloured shadows beneath his angular cheekbones, feathery mascara across his eyelashes and a plume of smokey silver-grey shadow around his eyes. Kessler was mesmerised, unable to tear his eyes away as the strangely androgynous man-woman creature cast his imperious gaze about the room.

"Well, I'm Carlos," the creature announced, as if realising that his friend was too enraptured to speak. "I'm to be Kessler's new bassist. Apparently."

"Carla, was it?" sneered Jimmy, provoking a stream of nervous titters from the girls.

Greg stared at the new arrival, then shot Kessler a furious glance that finally broke his concentration. "You absolute fucker," he mouthed at the guitarist. "This guy's a total putz. A cross-dressing goth putz!"

"Carlos," said Kessler, trying the man's unfamiliar forename on the tip of his tongue. It felt good to say it, to know it at last, some tiny portion of the man's many mysteries yielding to his curious gaze. "Come in, come in. Do you want a beer?"

"Beer? Ugh. No thank you," said a voice, female, from the corridor, and Kessler found himself suddenly bereft, strangely disappointed that the new man was not alone. Carlos glided into the room, swishing his skirts and playing his priestly role to the hilt, revealing his companions - two large goth girls, one short and plump with white-blonde, almost violet hair, the other nearly six foot tall and almost skeletally thin, with a sullen, suspicious gaze peering from under long black hair. Both were heavily made up, in the same monochromatic colour scheme as Carlos.

The tall goth dug in a leather handbag and produced a bottle of Port - and not cheap either - which she waved in Kessler's direction, though he noted she did not surrender it to him. "Would you like some glasses?" he offered, wondering what he could scrounge up that was clean.

"We can drink out of the bottle," the blonde goth retorted as the pair of them oozed forward into the room like a gothic oil slick. Not one of Daniel's friends made as if to move or offer them space, staring at the newcomers as if they were revenants from beyond the grave, in fact perhaps even clustering closer around the television like herd animals drawing in, in the face of a threat.

"Don't worry, we're not staying long," Carlos announced. "We're just on our way to Slimelight, well, maybe stopping off at The Bank for a quick nightcap first... Is this your bass?" In a couple of strides, the lanky bass-player was across the room, picking up the black Fender Jazz bass that Kessler always left out, in the hopes of attracting a passing musician. "Have you got a distortion pedal?"

"Yeah, let me see..." Kessler felt as if he'd been released from a spell, dropping to his knees and digging around in his musical clobber to produce a Big Muff. Dengler looked at the brand name, smirked, and raised a knowing eyebrow, causing a slight crimson blush across Kessler's cheeks, before plugging bass into pedal and pedal into amp. Well, at least he seemed to know how guitar cables worked, that was a good sign.

As the two goth girls stood in a corner and sucked at their port-wine like overfed babies nuzzling at a pacifier, Dengler adjusted the strap - again making Kessler feel unnecessarily short - stretching it out to its full length so that the bass knocked around his knees.

"Haha, look, it's Sid Vicious," called Jimmy from the futon, again, showing off for the mod girls, courting their titters. Kessler could feel the hostility coming off his friends like a wave, waiting for Carlos to fail, to prove himself a goth poseur, a total joke in fancy dress. So they didn't understand the tall, lanky bassist's strangely compelling charisma. Well, just wait. They'd see.

Dengler just sneered in their direction, then flipped the amp on, and started to play.

Kessler stared. Hell, they all stared. It wasn't even that he was a particularly good musician - though he certainly knocked out a totally passable and recognisable version of New Dawn Fades - it was more the _way_ that he played, shoulders at an angle, knees splayed wide, thighs taut, jack-heeled ankles slamming down against the floor in time with the beat, throwing his head around and posing, bending forward as if labouring over the guitar, before snapping back and dancing away, his hips wriggling like a pair of over-excitable eels. Even there, in a tiny dorm room, on the fourth floor walk-up of the NYU Performing Arts dorm, it was obvious that this Dengler dude had some kind of magnetic presence, banging away in the rehearsal room as if he were standing on the stage of Madison Square Garden.

As Kessler watched, transfixed and enthralled, Greg seemed to relent on his previous decision that the guy was an ass, and slid capably into the drum stool, catching Dengler's beat and playing along. Holy shit, even with just the two of them, it sounded good, and Kessler found himself drawn towards his Epiphone, picking it up and trying to shape his fingers into half-remembered chords. Everyone in the room was watching now, the film forgotten in the background, as Kessler felt himself sucked into the new bassist's chord progressions. New Dawn Fades fell apart, as Kessler forgot the verse and fluffed the notes, badly, but the impromptu audience clapped anyway.

"That was pretty cool... for a fuckin' goth band," Jimmy burped.

But this time, the mod chicks did not titter in appreciation. "Shut up, Jimmy. They're ace. Try one of your songs, Danny...?"

Kessler nodded, still looking at the mysterious bassist out of the corner of his eye, as if afraid he would vanish if he took his eyes off him, even as he caught Greg's attention. "Shall we try Precipitate? Or maybe The Specialist?"

As they squabbled with the barely subsumed animosity of two men who had been in a band together for far too long, Dengler reached out for the goth girls' wine. The blonde girl wiped the neck clean, and handed it to him with a sigh. "Don't you dare backwash in it, Dengler."

But as Dengler, with a positively malevolent expression, extended a long, pink tongue, and pretended to gob into the bottle, Kessler felt an almost physical shock go through his body. There was something obscene about the gesture, both the physicality of the unexpected organ, but also the defiance with which Dengler immediately did the exact thing that had been expressly forbidden. And as the girls voiced their protests, Kessler found himself wondering which, if either of them, Dengler was dating. The blonde one was clearly the cuter of the pair, but she treated Dengler with such obvious contempt that they seemed unlikely to have any kind of relationship beyond sharing alcohol.

"Are we going to play, Kessler?"

Kessler came back to his senses with a shock, and nodded, turning to Greg to count him in. "Alright, let's do Song Seven." It was a familiar song, one that the girls all agreed was the best, even if it was a bit too heavily indebted to The Pixies. Dengler just watched him for a minute or two, his eyes following his fingers on the fretboard, before joining in. And Kessler felt his heart leap with the surge in the music, because Dengler, he wasn't just playing the ordinary, expected, root and kick-drum bassline that Kessler had planned for the song, he was actually playing a lead guitar line, on the bass, slipping between the chords to pull out an unexpected counter-melody, increments and tones that Kessler had never thought to pair with his framework for the song. Round and round, they played, and Dengler wasn't just following him, he was chasing him, cutting back and getting ahead of him, flirting with him as the bass surged ahead, taking the lead for a moment before falling back, kissing his melody, flirting with his chord progression, winding all around him like a subtle musical seduction, wrapping the bassline around his guitar almost like a sweet and tender embrace, and Kessler suddenly felt all of the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and prickle with anticipation.

But alas, no. Dengler took a wrong turn, anticipating the wrong chord, and Greg muffed the transition to the chorus, and the song fell apart in a shambolic mess, but still, it was enough - it was enough for Kessler to know, yes, this was the bass player that had been born to play with his embryonic, as yet unnamed band.

The girls were already on their feet, clapping their appreciation. "Woo!" yelled Jimmy's chick, before the boys took up their usual chant. "We are the mods, we are the mods, we are the..." etc etc and so on. Even Jimmy looked vaguely impressed, and Jimmy didn't like any bands except The Who and The Jam.

As Kessler gestured with his hands for his friends to quiet down, Dengler fixed them with an evil grin. "Mod is dead," he drawled sarcastically. "Do we not, as yet, smell the Modernist decomposition? Do we hear nothing of the gravediggers that are coming to bury Mod? Mod is dead, for we have killed him."

"What the fuck, man?" Greg clearly liked the man's musical contributions, but even he had limits.

"Nietzsche," shrugged Carlos, and lit an almost post-coital cigarette, posing with it in his fingers, as if he was aware of the dazzling effect that the smoke-wreathes had as they wrapped about his pallid, almost vampiric wrists. "So. Am I in?" He turned, expectantly towards Kessler.

Kessler grinned, openly, almost soppily, as if it were ever a question, as if he wouldn't have got down on his knees and begged the new musicians to stay and play with them had he acted more coyly. "Sure. When can you rehearse?"

"Well." Carlos unhanded the bass from around his neck, and sucked deeply on his cigarette. "Monday nights, Tuesday afternoons, but not the evenings, obviously, as my radio show. Wednesday, yes, Thursday, perhaps, if it's early, Friday, Saturday, no, except maybe in the afternoon, Sunday is out of the question..."

"Whoa, whoa, hot damn, let me get my day planner, and we'll work something out," Kessler sputtered, looking around for his messenger bag before realising he had tidied it away upstairs during their brief cleaning spree. Placing his guitar back on its stand, he made his way up the steep, narrow staircase to the loft, to retrieve it from his desk. Notebook, binder, philosophy textbook... where the hell was his diary? Ah, there it was, in the front flap pocket along with the keys to his bike lock and his Kim's Video membership card. But as he turned to go back down to the main space, he realised he was not alone. Dengler had followed him up to the sleeping loft, and was looking about with an inquisitive leer that made him feel distinctly uneasy. Kessler and Greg were both fairly short, so they could manoeuvre about the loft space quite easily by just ducking their heads, but Dengler was folded over almost double in the narrow space.

"Which is your bed?" he asked, in an almost lascivious tone. As if it wasn't obvious, as Kessler's eyes flickered towards the neater of the two beds, the one whose walls were absolutely covered with photos of bands cut from the pages of the NME. Dengler nodded appreciatively, and collapsed into the mattress, stretching out his long limbs to touch photos of New Order, The Pixies, Stereolab, My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3 and PJ Harvey. Kessler felt, at the same time, both slightly violated, but also intensely excited. Not many people visited his bed, it was true, no matter how hard he flirted with the few girls in the mod scene, they seemed to prefer taller, more successful musicians like Jimmy, even if Jimmy was ginger.

"So you were saying, um, Monday and Wednesday would be best for you?" Kessler stuttered, checking his day planner then glancing shyly underneath his eyelashes in Dengler's direction. Dengler was now rummaging around in the bedclothes, had found, and then abandoned Kessler's pyjamas, and was now examining Bobo Bear. "Um, excuse me," said Kessler firmly, removing the beloved gift from his brother from the bassist's grasp, before setting the bear gently but firmly on his desk. "Sorry, Bobo," he found himself saying, almost superstitiously, under his breath.

"Bobo?" asked Dengler, with a raised eyebrow, as he reached out one long, lanky leg and prodded Kessler's calf with it gently. "You are a man of many surprises, _Daniel_..." Kessler felt a slight edge of frisson at the formal way he pronounced his full name. Daniel. It sounded so sophisticated in Dengler's deep, low voice. From now on, he was done with Dan and Danny. He would be Daniel, just to hear the series of sonorous syllables in Dengler's resonant twang. "Though, that said, you and your friends are all so Brideshead Revisited, I was half expecting someone to break out the quails' eggs."

He raised his eyes and stared at Dengler, hard, trying to work out whether he should be offended by that remark, before realising, with a slight shock, that Dengler had still not removed the leg from between his own, and there it still lay, gently leaning against his ankles like an invitation that any Victorian aunt would have been hard pressed to know how to respond to. He continued to stare at Dengler, hard, and as he did, he realised that he, himself, had made no effort to draw back, or remove his own legs, and his flesh, now, seemed to be hyper-alert, warm, almost feverish, everywhere the leather of Dengler's trousers touched the soft cotton of his socks.

"You could, you know," suggested Carlos, when neither of them had moved for some time. "Come with us to Slimelight?"

"I can't go to Limelight," Kessler protested, as limply as his hands lay in his lap, pretending to fold the pages of his diary. "It's a goth club; I'll never get in."

"I'm not a goth, and they let me in," Carlos shrugged, in almost direct contradiction of the fact that he was, in point of fact, dressed as an S&M bondage-priest in pancake vampire makeup, looking gothier than a barbarian engaged in the sacking of Rome.

"I can't leave my friends... I mean... it'd be rude to leave my own party," Kessler heard his voice suggest, even more limply than before, limper than the limpest lily that ever were strewn from a Smiths fan's limp lilywhite hands.

"Suit yourself," shrugged Carlos, and finally removed his leg. Kessler felt suddenly bereft, wanted to protest, wanted to demand that he put it back, immediately.

"You could stay..." he suddenly blurted out, feeling his face flushing, as if he were suggesting something patently dirty, rather than innocently soliciting a friend to stay at a casual gathering.

Carlos shook his head quickly, a casually dismissive motion. "It's a mod party. They'll never accept me."

"My friend are pretty open minded," Kessler tried to insist, in direct contradiction of the mocking he fully expected from Jimmy, the moment that Dengler and the goth girls left.

"And what about you?" Dengler was climbing to his feet - or rather, in the low space, he had risen only to his knees, to avoid bashing his head or leaving the prints of jack boots all over Kessler's clean sheets. "Are you open-minded."

"I try." Kessler was suddenly aware of just how close Dengler was, and of how, with himself sitting and Dengler kneeling, they were almost the same height, Dengler's head, his thin lips and his slightly obscene pink tongue only a few inches away from his own. He was staring again, and Dengler seemed to be perfectly aware that he was doing so, licking his own lips as if trying to distract him, to focus his straying eyes on that wet, fleshy orifice, as if inviting him to consider other things he might want to do or have done to him with that obscene tongue. The air seemed to crackle around them, Kessler's skin prickling, both with fear of discovery, that one of the goth girls - or worse, one of his friends - might come up the stairs and find them... well, find them what? Just staring at each other like a pair of mooning teenagers? But also prickling with something else... fear, excitement, anticipation? He felt his toes curling inside his hand-tooled Italian shoes as he tried to still the catch in his breath, the flutter in his heart, the weird dizzy floating sensation in his brain like he had just downed a pint of overly fizzy lager entirely too fast, except he didn't want to burp, he wanted to do something else entirely with his mouth and his lips.

And still, the kiss took him by surprise.

Carlos was forceful, he actually reached around the back of his neck and pulled his whole head towards him before bringing his mouth down upon Kessler's quivering, nervous lips. And that tongue, obscene, pink, moist and soft, slid in like an overconfident subway rider gaining the carriage as the doors closed, searching his mouth like a German spotlight picking off stragglers climbing the Berlin Wall. Kessler felt himself spread out, stripped, laid bare, his whole sexual history an open book for the older man as he sat, shocked, his mouth just a bit too slack for just a bit too long, realising that he wanted the kiss only as it was ending, his mouth finally moving and his lips trying to consolidate and suck around Carlos' tongue, just as it was being withdrawn like an unsuccessful novelty Christmas single on the 26th of December.

And it was all over just as quickly. Carlos pulled away and straightened up, his face impassive as if the kiss had never happened at all. He shrugged nonchalantly and headed for the stairs, leaving Kessler's head reeling, though at the last minute, he stopped, and turned half back towards him. "Monday, right? I'll see you about six."

"Six?" Kessler was still finding it hard to think. Oh, right. Rehearsal. "Yes, I'll see you then," he told Dengler's retreating back as the new bassist disappeared down the stairs, collected the goth girls, and let himself out.

Trying to gather his wits about him, Kessler picked up a pen from his desk - the black ballpoint pen that had started this whole thing, he realised with a shock - and wrote down a single name, in the space for Monday at 6pm: CARLOS. Just to be firm, he underlined it, twice, and then raised his fingers to his lips, touching them, gently, as if to make sure that they were still there.


	3. Breakfast of Champions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the party, Kessler tries to soothe his hangover with a quick breakfast at the NYU Campus Centre, only to find himself mistaken for a Goth and attacked by Preps. Fortunately, he is saved by a chance encounter with Captain Banks of the Lacrosse Team.

As Kessler made his way across campus to find breakfast, he felt his head spinning. Partly, it was the obvious wretched, stomach-churning hangover of too much Newkie Brown and too many late-night spliffs, and partly it was this weird combination of nerves and excitement and panic, like, excitement, because he might finally have found the right bass-player for his band, which meant he finally got to express this all-too-important and all-too-often neglected part of himself, but also, like, sheer panic, because _what about that kiss_ , what had been the cause of it, what did it mean? That Carlos dude was creepy, and strange, and weird, and Christ he even wore dresses, and did he really think that Kessler was gay, what, with the kissing and the flirting over ballpoint pens and all, but also... holy fucking shit, what a kiss, what a life-altering, sexuality-rearranging hell of a kiss.

Kessler entered the campus centre, found the cafe and ordered breakfast - a pot of coffee, scrambled eggs on toast, on rye bread, please, because he was picky about toast, and absolutely no bacon or sausages anywhere near his plate, not so much because he had become a vegetarian over the past year, but more because NYU's catering system seemed able to turn any form of food into an inedible grey mush even less palatable than his British mother's attempts at French home-cooking. Kessler was distinctly _weird_ about food. It was bad enough that he was on a scholarship, and had to rely on the campus catering, as it was free and included in his tuition, while he was too poor to go and eat properly in the bars and restaurants of the East Village like all his mates did. But he found eating in the dorm humiliating, so at the weekends, he made his way over to the sparsely attended campus centre cafe to charge his food to his meals card. Besides, he needed to be alone, in order to think, and try to work through his conflicted emotions about the gangling bassist he'd recruited - and then snogged - the night before.

He tried the eggs and found them inedible, and in fact almost frightening in their anaemic pale-yellowness, so he scraped them off the toast and ate it with butter while sipping his coffee, trying not to notice how his espresso was almost the exact limpid deep-brown-black of Carlos' eyes.

"Well, what have we here?" Daniel's reverie was abruptly interrupted by the clatter of trays and the stomp of cleated boots as the dining hall was abruptly invaded by a small gang of Lacrosse players. "Look at the oil slick - is it a Goth?" demanded one of the Preps as they circled his table as if threatening to sit down.

For fucks sake, though Kessler, glancing down at his clothes. Did he look like a Goth? It was so fucking obvious, he was a mod, when it came down to youth tribe allegiances - though, that said, he looked down to see black suit, black shirt, black tie, as if he'd been subconsciously affected by his crush in establishing his early morning fashion choices.

"Little baby Goth, all by itself. Did it get separated from its Mommy-Goth?" asked the other Prep, slamming his tray down, hard, at the end of Kessler's table.

Was that really necessary? Kessler cast his eyes desperately about the Campus Centre - it was nearly deserted on a Sunday morning - wondering why, of all the empty tables available, the Preps had decided they needed _his_ space.

"Look, it's Eddie Munster," retorted the first Prep, reaching out to tweak Kessler's tie. Kessler was too quick for him, tucking it into his shirt before it could be dipped into his scrambled eggs or his coffee or otherwise bespoiled. Feeling all the hairs prickling on the back of his neck with the danger of the situation, Kessler wondered how quickly he could get away, if it was worth surrendering the rest of his coffee - likely to be the only caffeine he was likely to get all day - to get out before any real fight started.

But as abruptly as the ruck brewed, it dissipated. "Leave him alone," insisted an all-too-familiar voice somewhere behind him, and Kessler suddenly noticed the beams of light shining in through the tall, campus centre windows, the sound of birdsong from Washington Square (funny, wrong season for robins, he thought) and the unmistakable aroma of Golden Retriever puppies gambolling across the dining hall.

He looked up to see the Golden Boy, the captain of the Lacrosse team, Carlos' bete noir, Paul Julian Banks, striding to his rescue, then standing in front of him, wearing a candy-striped pink Lacoste polo shirt that brought out the apple-cheeked rosy hue of his face, and a pair of white tennis shorts so brief that they left little to the imagination, so tight in fact, he could almost count the veins on his... and a pearly-cream coloured cricket jumper draped casually around his neck. His face was speckled thickly with freckles, sparkling and quivering slightly in the morning air as the curtains of butter-blond hair parted to reveal a tentative smile. Almost immediately, the other Preps disappeared off to find other mischief, leaving Kessler and the Golden Boy alone.

"Do you mind if I sit down?" asked Paul Julian Banks, in a voice as deep and low and soft as a well-loved childhood teddy bear's knapped belly-fur.

"Oh. Of-of-of-course," Kessler stuttered, moving the extra plate with the discarded scrambled eggs out of the way so the other boy could sit down.

The Golden Boy sat, smiling placidly with the imperturbable happy calm that only the extremely wealthy or the extremely stupid ever achieved. "Scrambled eggs! Do you mind if I eat those?"

Kessler shrugged, and gestured them towards him, wondering what on earth had lead to this heavenly visitation, almost too afraid to speak for fear of revealing his own ineptitude in front of this vision of Pretty perfection.

"Oh, goodie. More protein," announced Paul Julian Banks, picking the eggs up with his coffee spoon and shovelling them between his rose-pink lips into the gaping maw of his mouth with the voracious appetite of an athlete. Noticing Kessler staring, he smiled sweetly, sending the unseasonable birds of Washington Square into an even higher ecstasy of ecstatic tweeting. "You don't remember me, do you?"

Kessler gulped his coffee and shook his head quickly, not trusting his voice.

"We were at school together in Paris." Kessler merely looked blank, casting his mind back through the three or four strict Catholic seminaries he'd been expelled from for resisting the authority of various terrifying and ancient but totally unjustified nuns. "The summer Accelerated French programme at the International School? I'm Pol." He pronounced his own name in the European fashion, sending a tiny shiver of frisson down Kessler's spine.

Suddenly, the image clicked in Kessler's memory - a small, thin, blond prepubescent in a Pixies T-shirt struggling with the vagaries of the future perfect tense that came totally naturally to Kessler as an almost-native speaker. How on earth had that tiny, frail, creature ever metamorphosed into the pinnacle of throbbing American prep-hood that sat before him?

"Polly!" Kessler ejaculated, without thinking. "I haven't seen you in years!"

Paul Julian Banks frowned at the childhood nickname, and hurricanes and blizzards laid waste to the awe-struck birds of Washington Square, as Kessler wondered if he would ever recover from the faux pas, feeling his stomach reeling and sinking down past his feet into the bedrock of Manhattan. But then Paul Julian Banks brightened, and the sun returned to the West Village. "So I hear you're in a band?" he ventured.

Kessler nearly choked on his rye bread. "Where did you hear that?" he sputtered, alarmed.

"Around," said Paul Julian Banks, flicking his long, pretty, primrose-coloured hair out of his eyes with a greasy, butter-stained finger. "Do you need a bass player?"

It took every fibre of Kessler's self control not to spit out his breakfast. How could it be? Two years, he had been searching for a bass player, and now suddenly he had located two bass players in one weekend? "I think we've recently found a bass player..." he hedged carefully, and Paul Julian Banks' face fell so instantly and so catastrophically that Kessler felt himself bereft, wanting to throw his arms around the younger man and console him until the sun returned, even if it meant sacrificing Bobo Bear's best hugs for a week. "But we still need a singer?"

"Too bad I can't sing," Paul Julian Banks mumbled into his protein shake. But then he brightened. "I can rap, though." And almost immediately, he launched into a near note-perfect version of an absolutely filthy Lil Kim monologue. "How you like it baby? Uhh, from the front, Uhh, from the back, give that ass a smack, Bet your man won't do it like that, Can't work the middle, plus his thing too little! Let me grab your ta-ta's, do the cha-cha, Make you scream Pa-pa, you da best, Da Da, Now watch mama, go up and down dick to jaw crazy, Uhh! Say my name baby..."

"OK, OK, OK." Kessler shrugged his defeat, holding up his hands as he blushed furiously, his virgin ears still ringing with the erotic propositions that Paul Julian Banks was so effortlessly rattling off. "You can be in the band," he agreed, just to make him stop rapping before he died of shame, which was still a terminal disease in the far-flung corners of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that his family originally hailed from.

"Yay!" said Paul Julian Banks, jiggling slightly in his seat. "When do we rehearse? I've got loads of lyrics to spit. All of them just as sexual."

"Tuesday?" stuttered Kessler, thinking quickly on his feet. He had already agreed to rehearse with Carlos on Monday, but there was no way that he wanted Carlos and Paul Julian anywhere near one another until he figured out a diplomatic way to break it to his bassist that he had invited his mortal enemy - and a Prep, no less! - to join the band. With Carlos busy at his radio show, he could audition the beautiful blond boy without fear of discovery.

"Awesome!" said Paul Julian Banks, with a smile like the Mediterranean sun broiling bathing beauties and decrepit millionaires on a private beach near Monte Carlo. "Oh, and here's my mixtape, if you want to hear me spit lyrics." Digging in his rucksack, he produced a cassette tape and handed it to Kessler, who winced at the poorly executed cartoon cover of Paul Julian as a gangster selling dope to Donald Trump and Rudy Juliani, but did his best not to show it. "I'll see you Tuesday!" And with that, he shovelled the rest of his dinner - and most of Kessler's - into his maw, then disappeared off to lacrosse practice.


	4. First Rehearsal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions are heightened, as Carlos finds it is his turn to be surprised, attending his first rehearsal for Kessler's new, as yet un-named band.

Kessler was at an absolute fever pitch by Monday evening. Hot damn, he had been a wreck of nerves all day, unable to concentrate on his Advanced French Literature lecture, unable to concentrate in the screening room of his History Of Silent Film course, a complete and total mess in his Popular Music In The 20th Century class. All he could think of was the evening's rehearsal, and the tall mysterious Goth he would be playing host to. 

Getting rid of Greg had been easy enough - he told him that Mazzy Star were doing an instore at the Tower Records uptown - and pacified his guilty conscience by telling himself that really, it would be easier to teach Carlos the songs without the drummer around. He had prepared a special rehearsal tape for Carlos, recorded on his 4-track with the guitar in one channel and the drums in the other, so that it would be easy to isolate and play along at home. Then he had set the scene, cleaning his dorm room, putting out romantic candles as mood lighting, and even cadging a bottle of expensive French wine off his Dad during the requisite parental visitation on Sunday evening. He turned out the overhead lights, turned on his lava lamp and lit the candles, then sat down to wait for his romantic assignation - oops, he meant, first rehearsal with his dashing new bass player.

Carlos, of course, arrived nearly half an hour late, as if patently aware of the effect he had on the young, smitten guitarist, and prolonging the agony as long as possible. Kessler had bitten his nails down to the quick, and was contemplating just opening the bottle of wine and downing it to still his nerves or staunch his disappointment. And then, finally, just as he had almost given up hope, the appointed knock came at his door, sending his heart fluttering off like a belfry full of anxious bats.

In his afternoon daydreams, he had imagined pulling the door back with a suave bow, leaning against the doorframe seductively and drawling "Why helloooo" in a low, seductive, slightly British accent. Of course he tripped over his own shoes on the way to the door, yanked it open abruptly and just about squeaked out a nervous "Hi!" in response to the tall, elegant, gaunt figure at his door, dressed head to toe in midnight black, his jet-onyx eyes sparkling in the too-bright industrial neon of the dorm's corridor.

"Good evening," said Carlos, and if Kessler had been expecting him to apologise for his tardiness, well, he didn't even mention it, sweeping into the dorm room as if he owned it, letting his leather man-bag slip to the floor before removing his long black coat in a single, fluid, seductive movement. Kessler stared, he couldn't help it, too absolutely transfixed to even rush forward to take the proffered coat to hang it up until Carlos coughed quietly, slightly annoyed to have to draw attention to the indelicate matter of menswear. And then Kessler noticed how he was dressed, and stopped in his tracks, Carlos' coat only half-folded across his arms. Carlos was, in point of fact, wearing a suit. A vintage suit. A mod 3-button vintage suit, but of course Carlos had customised it, rolling up the too-short trousers to show off his 16-hole Doc Martens, and rolling back the cuffs to show the leather bondage bracelets on his wrists. On the whole, on anyone else, the general effect would have been that of a grown man wearing a child's clothes, gangling arms and ankles protruding beyond outgrown cuffs, a look that Kessler, in particular, was rather oversensitive towards, given the fact that he could still occasionally fit into a boy's suit in charity shops. But on Carlos, the outlandish get-up, like everything else about Carlos, looked not ridiculous but gloriously sublime.

"You look nice," Kessler squeaked, before realising he was still holding the coat, clutching it to his chest like he was trying to inhale Carlos' very essence, along with the faint odour of clove cigarettes, patchouli and frankincense that clung to it like an animal's musk to its pelt.

Carlos smirked, preening his hair as he accepted the compliment like a royal tithe. "Thank you." A pause as he dug regally in his man-purse. "Do you mind if I smoke in here?"

"No, not at all," Kessler lied, digging out one of Greg's ashtrays before darting upstairs to throw the coat on his bed like a proper party host. "Open the wine, if you like." From his vantage point, he could see Dengler look around, clock the wine, then act mildly flummoxed to be confronted with a cork rather than a twist-off. "Corkscrew is on the guitar amp," Kessler called limply from above.

Carlos made rather a mess of the cork, finally giving up and pushing the thing through down into the bottle rather than extracting it. That made Kessler's toes curl - and then, again, as Carlos did not even bother asking for a glass, simply raising the bottle to his lips and downing a good gulp. Oy vey, it was a good thing his father could not see the philistine ends to which his precious vintage merlot had been subjected. Wiping the top of the bottle with his shirtsleeve, Carlos smirked and handed the bottle over. Kessler's mind protested with every ounce of his well-bred upbringing, but his body surrendered to peer pressure as he took the bottle, and said a quick prayer of apology as he raised it to his lips. The merlot was delicious, perhaps even more delicious for the faint trace of moisture still lingering on the bottle's rim, reminding him awkwardly yet tantalisingly of that single, shocked kiss.

Fortified by Dutch Courage, Kessler moved towards his guitar and flicked his amp from standby to on. "So I thought we'd start with a new song?" he suggested, draping his guitar around his sparrowlike shoulders.

"They're all new to me," Dengler drawled, sucking at his Djarum clove cigarette. He actually looked slightly surprised that he was expected to play music, and so quickly, as if he was not quite finished flipping his hair and posing with his plumes of cigarette smoke against the candle-light for maximum visual effect.

"Yes, but this one is new-new," Kessler explained.

"Right then, play me the _new_ new song," Dengler sighed, moving back to the other amp and picking up the bass gingerly, looking at it with a slightly distasteful air, as if silently outraged at being expected to work, as well as preening before an admiring audience. He certainly seemed aware of Kessler's eyes upon him, arching his back and stretching himself up to his full height, and shamelessly enjoying the effect that his beautiful body had on the smaller man.

Kessler dragged his eyes away from the frustrating Goth and forced them to his fretboard. Normally, it was the one time in his life that he felt totally confident, the moments that he was holding his guitar and playing, losing himself in the sheer joy of music that he, himself, his own fingers had called into being. But with the Goth's eyes upon him, he felt oddly self conscious, and had to turn shyly away to find his fingering. He was actually growing used to it, the shocked expressions from people who normally dismissed him, on account of his size, his shyness, his scholarship status, when they heard his music for the first time. He knew that it was good, he knew that it was catchy, that his tunes had a way of earworming themselves into unsuspecting brains, like Greg had been humming the riff from The _New_ New Song for weeks now.

He lost himself as he played, allowing himself to get caught up in the melody, his fingers racing up and down the fretboard like cagey spiders, following the tumbling sequences of sounds he could hear in his brain. And suddenly he realised he was not alone. There was a second guitar following him, doubling his guitar riff for a few bars before diverging off into a counter-melody that took his breath away, even as it echoed his own thoughts. Tumbling back and forth, they chased one another, weaving their chords in and out of each other's riffs like Kessler wished he could weave his fingers in between the strands of that tantalising fringe hanging over the bass-player's perpetually smouldering cigarette. Note touched note in caresses and careful chases, a root note, a fifth, a playful minor third scudding off to a flirtatious seventh before resolving to an octave.

And when the song finally ended in a tangle of feedback and octave-hopping bass, Kessler looked up, his face flushed and orgiastic, to see the lanky bassist staring back at him, his cruel lips parted and panting, with an earnest expression that almost approached... respect?

"Do you want to try another one?" Kessler asked breathlessly, barely daring to suggest anything that might break the spell.

Carlos nodded, and pushed his sweaty fringe out of his face with one arm before reaching for the wine bottle. Both of them drank, solemnly, silently, then Kessler started to play the next song. The wine and the music befuddled his head, made him grow bold, and he found himself experimenting, both with the music, and his approaches to the man. But it was like he didn't need to speak; all of his flirtation was done musically, the pair of them dancing closer to one another, hips almost touching as they faced one another, pelvises grinding against the back of their guitars, yearning fingers caressing strings instead of bodies. Kessler was showing off openly now, swinging his hips and kicking his heels, but was surprised and delighted to find his body language echoed by the bassist, two show-offs in a show-off show-down.

They were still bending each other out of shape, hips cocked, backs twisted half over backwards as they wrestled musically, the bottle of wine empty on the floor between their feet, when Greg finally came home, swaggering into the room singing 'Fade Into You' as he flicked the overhead lights on, totally killing the mood.

"Oh, hello," Greg blurted out as the music collapsed around him. "Didn't expect to see you here, Carl. If I'd known we were rehearsing, I wouldn't have..."

"Carlos just stopped by, it was kind of spontaneous," Daniel lied, for the second time in an evening, even as Carlos raised a disbelieving eyebrow at catching him in such an obvious fib. "How was Mazzy Star."

"Swoonsome," sighed Greg. "Hope Sandoval is _such_ a babe... Can we get a hot chick singer?"

"Well," hedged Kessler, reluctant to tell his drummer that he seemed to have accidentally hired a filthy, lacrosse-playing Prep to front their band. "We'll see. Wait until you hear what The New New Song."

Greg perked up. "Right, let's hear it?" he asked, settling into the drum kit and kicking it into life. With drums pounding along behind his and Carlos' flirting guitars, Kessler thought it sounded like a whole new band. But before they could even get to the big feedback and octave-hopping bassline finale, they were interrupted by furious pounding on the wall from next door.

"Shit," swore Kessler, as cross as a frustrated guitarist interrupted mid-solo by an irate neighbour could be. "Guess it's too late at night for drums."

But Carlos had been looking oddly out of sorts since the drummer arrived, the intense, almost erotic playfulness of the earlier part of the evening suddenly snapped by an odd skittishness. "I should really take off. I have a long day tomorrow, what with the radio show and all." He couldn't resist adding a self-promoting plug. "Theatrum Aetherium, tomorrow night on WNYU. I might even play some Mazzy Star in your honour... but only the early stuff, of course."

Greg rolled his eyes - clearly he was not as impressed by their charismatic bassist's side-line - and started to roll a cigarette. "When's our next rehearsal?" Wednesday, they all agreed, before Carlos practically fled from the room.

But Kessler followed him out to the hall, closing the door softly behind him so Greg would not hear. "Hey," he called softly, and Carlos turned back towards him, raising the straight black arrows of his eyebrows expectantly. "Did you forget something?"

"What could I have possibly...?" Carlos' expression was slightly confused, uncharacteristically befuddled.

Flushed with musical excitement, and emboldened mostly by the recognition of the prowess of his own songwriting, but also partially by the better part of that bottle of his father's best merlot, Daniel reached out his hand and caught Carlos by the tie, the latter so surprised he actually allowed himself to be reeled in by it like an oversized gothic fish. For a moment, Daniel just stared up into those gleaming black eyes, seeing himself reflected there, so innocent, so surprised, but then he closed his eyes, stood up on his tippy-toes and pressed a kiss onto Carlos' smirking, self-assured lips.

At first, he missed, and caught a sharp crack of chin, but when Carlos seemed to catch on to what he wanted, he bent his shoulders, lowered his face and found Daniel's mouth with his own, sucking his tongue between his lips with the same forcefulness with which he attached his bass strings. For half a minute, it was pure heaven, as they explored each other mouths with tongues and lips, but as vague voices echoed up the stairwell, Carlos suddenly pulled away, distracted, his smirk wiped out by an uncharacteristically startled look.

"I'll see you on Wednesday," he blurted out quickly, then turned and fled, leaving Kessler both astonished at his own boldness, and confused by the bassist's sudden coyness.


	5. PJ Banksta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kessler and Greg fear that they have made a terrible mistake in their potential new singer.

Of course Paul Julian Banks never turned up on Tuesday evening. Not like Kessler had really, truly been expecting him to, because after all, what would such a stunningly popular Prep, captain of the Lacrosse team, a Delta Tappa Kegga brother, winner of both men's and mixed doubles at tennis, be doing hanging round the NYU Performing Arts dorm's fourth floor on a Tuesday night. Surely he was out, boning debutantes or interning at some hot international hedge fund or scoring touchdowns at some Ivy League game, or doing whatever it was attractive, popular, wealthy Preps did with their evenings.

Greg, who had been thoroughly primed to expect the visitor this time, was less than impressed. "Well, didn't you say you had the guy's demo tape? We could listen to that, see what he's like before you decide to spend the evening moping over the dude's no-show."

"Alright," sighed Kessler, digging the mixtape from where he had stowed it in his messenger bag, and cringing again at the cover before slipping it into their stereo. As the music spilled out of the speakers, both of them stared at the stereo in horror, Kessler's face twisted in shock as Greg creased up with amusement at the dire awfulness of what neither of them could truly believe they were hearing.

"Yo, check it! You are the past sinner, the last winner, and everything we've come to," rapped the inappropriately named 'PJ Banksta' over a badly looped J Dilla beat. "Sleep tight! Grim rite!" he echoed back at himself. "Yo, we got two hundred couches where you can... sleep tight! Grim rite!"

The look of awestruck disbelief on Greg's face was absolutely priceless. "Dan... this is _shit_! We dodged a fucking bullet here, dude. This guy is the worst singer I have ever heard in my life. I mean, for real. A dodgy goth and a wanna-be rapper? These are your latest recruits? Dan, I am seriously starting to doubt your commitment to the band.

"He's... he's..." Daniel protested, trying to think how to adequately express the absolute astonishing male beauty of the potential singer. "He's got a _great_ stage presence. Trust me on this one."

"There is no stage presence that makes up for this... lyrical shit-sterpiece." Greg's face was set, as the tape spooled on in the background. "Listen to this asshole!"

"You're so cute when you're frustrated, dawg! Yo, you're so cute when you're sedated, dawg! Ow, ow, ow!" yelped PJ Banksta in the background before Greg, shaking his head dubiously, snapped the tape off.

"Absolutely not," said Greg.

"Did I mention he's really rich," Daniel protested, barely able to believe he was stooping to this level. "Like, his father owns half of Mexico, rich." 

"No, I'm not trying to hear this," insisted Greg.

"And he's super popular. Like, Delta Tappa Kegga popular, has loads and loads of friends and frat brothers willing to come to all our shows and run up huge bar tabs friends. Never underestimate the importance of having bandmates with lots and lots of thirsty friends, Greg."

"Frat brothers? Fucking listen to yourself, Dan!" Greg howled with outrage. "We're _mods_. We don't want fucking Preps turning up to our shows."

"If you want to be in a truly successful band, we have to leave tribal allegiances behind. Stop thinking of it as mod, or goth or prep. Just think of it as music. Good music, for everyone."

"Good music is _not_ for preps," Greg snapped. "I refuse, that offends my sense of dignity, to play music for preps!"

"Now you're starting to sound like Carlos," Kessler sneered.

"Well, maybe that dodgy goth has a point!" Greg shot back, and that was the end of that.


	6. Theatrum Aethereum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos Dengler, master DJ and expert seductionist, finds himself _rattled_ by the guitarist of his new band.

As much as Carlos hated to admit it, he was rattled. He was concerned, and uneasy and perturbed, and perhaps even a tiny bit distressed. Disquieted. His customary cool completely shattered, and the worst part of it all was the source of this new unease. That boy. That child. That insolent peasant. That flirty little Jewish kid from philosophy class. That diminutive guitarist who had somehow surprised him, emotionally ambushed him, caught him unaware with his totally unexpected musical genius for combining the playful drama of Prokofiev with the sweeping landscape of emotional devastation that marked late Shostakovich. Those songs. That _music_! The force and power of it had blindsided him!

For crying out loud, Carlos _knew_ music. A classical training, a dozen years of piano lessons, followed by years of apprenticeship in teenage metal bands. He had been searching high and low, for a decade, for the perfect outlet for his visionary... _vision_ of merging contemporary rock music with the symphonic sweep of 20th Century avant-garde classical composition. Unfortunately, his own talents for composing well, they had not developed entirely according to plan, in fact, they were still somewhat slow in manifesting at all. And yet this child, this insouciant schoolboy in an ill-fitting suit had stepped into the rehearsal room and plucked lonely laments of breathtaking beauty from the strings of his cheap Epiphone with such casual ease it was as if he were tinkling 'Three Blind Mice' on the ivories of an out of tune piano.

How dare he! Carlos seethed, and fumed, and yet still found himself humming the dazzling minor counter-melody of The New New Song, which had lodged itself into his brain for the better part of the past 24 hours... shit! That reminded him, he better get a move on, or he'd be late. His much-anticipated (at least among the denizens of NYU's sole Goth Dorm, who were his biggest fanclub) radio show was the only thing in his life he was never tardy for. It was too important. His audience awaited. So Carlos flipped wretchedly through his vinyl, seized an armful of his precious collection, stuffed it into his record bag and loped across campus as fast as his lanky long legs would allow.

It was obvious from the start, what the boy had wanted, thought Carlos as he queued up his first record. He teased, he prodded, he flirted from underneath those impossibly long pale-brown eyelashes. Carlos could spot them from a mile off - bi-curious boys drawn like moths to his fabulous style and imposing figure. It should have been an easy seduction, despite the nervous, tentative, yes-I-want-it / no-I-don't / wait-no-I-really-want-it reaction to that first stolen kiss in the boy's sleeping loft. The boy had been gagging for it, in his peach-fuzz sideburns and his polyester old man suit. There was no way he had misread the situation - the candles, the bottle of expensive wine, the deserted rehearsal studio sans drummer - the scene had been set for sexual shenanigans.

So what had gone wrong? 

Carlos stopped for a second, fading the ending of Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares into the intro to Lush's Light From A Dead Star with the deft touch of a master DJ.

The music. That was what had gone wrong. He had not expected to be so powerfully affected by the music. The boy's talent, to be perfectly honest, frankly intimidated him. He had gone in jaunty, perhaps even over-confident, and found himself completely outclassed and outranked, seduced and betrayed by the devastating sonic textures of the boy's casual compositions. He no longer just wanted to fuck the little mod-boy - though, to be fair, fucking that adorable, baby-faced little innocent with his uncontrollable light brown ringlets of hair and his soft hazel puppy-dog eyes, that would indeed be a tender and remarkable joy - he wanted to continue to make that awe-inspiring music rise up around them like a maelstrom, even after the delights of carnal play had long expired. His zipless fuck had suddenly sprung complications and trapdoors and unexpected depths of entanglement.

Noticing the record was spinning to a close, Carlos grabbed the next disc without thinking, and found himself mixing Light From A Dead Star straight into Dead Can Dance's Host of Seraphim. Curses! Three 4AD artists in a row? His failure to pay attention was having devastating consequences for his DJ set. Unless of course, he could somehow pass it off as a special, all-4AD show? Yes, that would do it. He dug around in his bag for a Wolfgang Press album and cued it up in preparation. Wolfgang Press? No, what on earth was he thinking! There was something else he suddenly desperately wanted to play.

"This is Carlos Dengler," he purred into the microphone as Lisa Gerrard's ethereal tones faded out in the background. "And you're listening to a special, all-4AD set tonight on Theatrum Aethericum on WNYU. The next band I have for you originally started their venerable career on 4AD records, though the selection I have to play for you tonight is from their sophomore album, on Beggars Banquet. This is The Passion of Lovers, by Bauhaus, and I wish to dedicate this track to a young man I recently had the pleasure to meet - also named Daniel - and also a guitarist of exquisite and rare talent..." As the menacing 12-string riff rose in the background, Carlos released the talk button on his microphone, and hoped to god he had not said too much, and given the game away.


	7. Two Hundred Sofas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Carlos finds that his mortal rival, the arch-Prep Paul Julian Banks, has been invited to join Kessler and his new band, he is forced to reassess both his position within the band - and his relationship to the impossibly annoying yet tantalising guitarist.

Wednesday evening could not come soon enough. Carlos suffered through Kant's interminable grammar in The German Language For Philosophy Majors, then tried desperately to pay attention through Mussolini, Hitler, Franco: Fascist Dictators; Fashion Icons, a cross-disciplinary offering through SVA's couture department. And then, finally, he was released, to check his hair, straighten his tie, and make his way over to NYU's Performing Arts Dorm. And Carlos astonished even himself by being actually a full five minutes early; Carlos! Who would inevitably be twenty minutes late for his own funeral. Such was his enthusiasm - though whether for the tiny, pretty, bird-like guitarist, or the immense and overwhelmingly beautiful music he wrote, that he would not quite like to say.

It was the drummer who let him in, as Daniel was still sitting, cross-legged on the floor, changing a string on his guitar. The transparent excitement with which the young guitarist's face lit up, well, that was reassuring to Carlos' ego, especially in the face of his somewhat ignominious exit the evening of the previous rehearsal. So he was forgiven his gauche and panicked flight. But in a way, Carlos was somewhat grateful for the drummer's presence, both because of the power he brought to their music, and for the cover he provided - otherwise, he was certain that the boyish young man would have been on his feet and almost certainly embracing him, if not trying to stick his tongue down his throat. Not that that idea wasn't welcome, and Carlos could feel his new suit trousers feeling awfully restrictive all of a sudden. But really, Carlos needed his space, needed to keep his distance and work out exactly what his angle was towards ensuring the future of the band before seducing and presumably disentangling himself from the overly enthusiastic little mod.

"I've written a new song," announced Daniel, his whole body straining towards Carlos as he spoke, like a spaniel wagging its tail at the arrival of a new playmate bearing brightly coloured balls.

"Have you? That was quick," Carlos blurted out. It had been less than 48 hours since they last gathered. Generally, on the few occasions that Carlos had composed, it had taken months of straining and repetition and endless anguishing over the exact suspended dominant chord to lead with.

But Daniel just grinned like an expectant kid waiting for Christmas, and launched into an infernally catchy repetitive drone on the bottom two strings of his guitar. "It's called Two Hundred Sofas." This was said with a conspiratorial glance towards the drummer, who immediately cracked up in giggles before moving to his drum stool to join in.

Carlos frowned; he hated being left out of inside jokes, out of the vague fear that they were always somehow on him. But Daniel had stood up now, playing the new song in earnest, throwing his whole body into the simple yet insistent guitar figure. It was amazing, the difference in the boy's body, when he played; how the normally repressed, tightly wound young man completely loosened, became pliable, almost acrobatic, throwing himself about, spine twisting at impossible angles, feet dancing as if he were flying, until Carlos found it impossible to contemplate what that young man's body might be like thrashing underneath him in bed. Christ, the way he danced, he looked like he fucked like a beast. Who would have thought it, to see the shy, self-contained little scholar in philosophy class?

The song buzzing in his head, Carlos strode towards the bass and picked it up. Christ, he hated the bass, it was his least favourite of all the instruments he had tried, the limitations of its solitary four strings, the confinement of having to stick to the lower registers of the scale. Why couldn't he play the guitar? Or better yet, the keyboards? In any other band, he'd have made a fuss, insisted, dominated the other musicians until he was allowed to take over on lead guitar. But there was no way he was putting up his meagre songwriting skills against that Kessler whiz-kid. He stuck to bass, trying to wind his way between and around the repetitive, droning riff, almost as if he really wanted to be playing the lead guitar instead.

Kessler's face was ecstatic, his pale golden eyes swivelling towards him as the tips of his immensely kissable lips twitched up in an irresistible grin. Christ, that child was beautiful when he smiled, his wide cheekbones puffing out like a small woodland creature and his sharp, pointed little chin twitching like an over-excited hamster as his eyes crinkled up helplessly, his joy spilling out over his face and through the room like a cool breeze. At that moment, Carlos thought, really, he would do anything to keep that smile glowing.

And then, suddenly, both his train of thought and the flow of the song were interrupted by a pounding on the door.

"Oh, fuck this noise," shouted Greg, leaning back to pound on the wall. "Fucking neighbours - we're fine. It's not even seven o'clock!"

But the pounding on the door came again, more insistent this time, as if the cessation of the music had inflamed rather than satisfied the interlocutor. Grumbling, Daniel tugged at his guitar cable to get a few extra feet of manoeuvring room, and walked to the door, swinging it open to reveal...

Jesus fucking Christ, what the fucking fuck was _that_ man doing _here_? Carlos felt his whole face growing hot with hatred as he stared at the interloper. For there, standing framed in the door, a stoned, placid grin on his face, his body wrapped in a pale blue and white barrel-striped rugby shirt, and a pair of jogging shorts so brief that they surely left half of his ass-cheeks exposed, his oversized love-tackle positively balled up like a basket thrust forward into their helpless eyes... stood Paul Julian Banks.

"Dude, what are you doing here?" sputtered Daniel, voicing the confusion on everyone's faces.

"You told me to drop by," shrugged Paul Julian, causing his blond hair to ripple almost to his shoulders. Carlos felt irritation tightening in him like a knot at the pit of his stomach. "Hey, guys, glad to see the whole band's here already. Awesome."

"Tuesday," Daniel intoned. "I told you to stop by Tuesday."

For a millisecond, the arrogant preppy confidence seemed to dim on the stupid, fawning golden retriever of a man's face, but then he smiled again jauntily. "Isn't it Tuesday?"

"Today is Wednesday, dude," Daniel informed him, slightly pityingly, but with a soppy half-a-smile.

Oh come on, thought Carlos. You cannot be serious. This Kessler character cannot seriously be charmed by this dumb-as-a-jockstrap scion of unspeakable wealth and privilege.

"Oh." The golden retriever looked a tiny bit lost and forlorn for a moment, then brightened slightly, blinking his baby-blue eyes slowly in response to the indulgent smile that was forming on Kessler's face. For crying out loud, thought Carlos. No one could seriously fall for that human bambi routine, could they? "No wonder. I thought the professor in my English Composition class this afternoon looked a bit different from the usual prof..."

Kessler giggled and started to play nervously with the hair at the side of his brow, dipping his chin coquettishly and blushing. "Well, you might as well come in," he offered, pulling back from the door to allow the golden retriever to bounce inside, and Carlos felt a low growl of jealousy.

Back off, bimbo, this is _my_ guitarist. I saw him first, he wanted to protest, but as Paul Julian stepped into the room, he disencumbered himself of first a guitar bag and then a backpack.

"I brought beer..." he announced and bent over - making a completely obvious and unnecessary display of his pert, perfectly rounded, preppy ass - to pull a six-pack of Corona from the depths. The little slut! Carlos had never thought to bring beer or anything else except himself to rehearsal, but then again, Carlos was habitually used to availing himself of the awestruck hospitality of worshipful groupies.

Carlos could see that the drummer was wavering - he had initially looked annoyed at the interruption, but the bottle of expensive imported beer passed between his cymbals had clearly won him over. Daniel, however, worried him. That slightly slavish look of sexual expectation and lust, it was the face that he customarily wore when addressing _him_. He didn't like seeing it directed at another man - especially not a man as unworthy of the prodigy's attention as this... this... fat, cornfed husk of a freckled farmer with a trust fund nearly as sizeable as that obscene display of family jewels almost completely failing to be adequately contained by the white jogging shorts. Paul Julian turned to hand a bottle of beer to Daniel, and Carlos found himself craning his neck to watch those oversized eggs jiggle within their nylon packaging.

"Did you listen to my mixtape?" Paul Julian asked, with the hopeful grin of a homely girl asked to dance at the prom.

Behind the drumkit, Greg stifled a guffaw, but Daniel looked slightly ashamed. "Well... um... Well, actually to be honest, I was totally inspired by one of your lyrics - I hope you don't mind, but I wrote a little ditty inspired by one of the rhymes. It's called Two Hundred Sofas."

Carlos had never seen an actual self-respecting human being bounce quite as excitedly as Paul Julian _bounced_ , actually jiggling up and down in place, setting his fishing tackle to tacking left and right, up and down in the most distracting fashion between his thighs. "Ha-HEM," coughed Carlos, attempting to catch Daniel's attention, hoping to have a quiet word with him about ejecting this interloper from their session, beer or no beer.

Paul Julian turned, and fixed Carlos with the most irritating and ingratiating of smiles. Seriously, if he had been just as mean in return, Carlos would have known how to respond, known how to react and handle the situation. But the golden retriever's eternal smarmy _niceness_ was simply infuriating. "I'm sorry. Did you want a beer?"

"I do not drink... _beer_ ," snapped Carlos, which was a lie, but he certainly wasn't drinking this prep's beer.

"Um, I don't know that you've been introduced? This is Carlos, our bassist," Daniel explained, with a slightly apologetic shrug in Dengler's direction.

For a moment, Paul Julian looked distinctly put out, narrowing his pretty blond eyebrows in his direction as he glanced longingly at the bass. Carlos, feeling very protective all of a sudden, wrapped his hands around his bass - well, Daniel's bass, really - and clutched it closer, with a decidedly proprietary air. Daniel momentarily looked torn, glancing over towards a second guitar case leaned in the corner, but at that moment, Carlos decided that he had been born to play the bass, and he was going to play the bass, and he was never going to play any other instrument except the bass, ever again in his life, glowering at Paul Julian as if daring him to pry the bass from his cold dead fingers.

Paul Julian relented and stepped back, raising his hands in defeat as he bent over again to retrieve his guitar bag. "It's OK, Carl. I'll sing. I brought my guitar just in case..."

"Carlos," said Carlos. "It's Carl _os_. Pronounced in the Columbian fashion."

"Whatever," shrugged Paul Julian, extracting a Fender from his gig bag, his white-clad ass bobbing only a few inches away from Daniel's confused and slightly bewildered face. "Have you got a microphone for me, Dan?"

"Shit," swore Daniel, suddenly looking about wildly. Since nobody in the embryonic band sang, there was no microphone and no PA. "Hang on, one of the guys on the floor below has a PA, he's let us borrow it before for parties. I can go and ask him if we can borrow it for the evening?"

"Cool!" Grinning placidly, Paul Julian flicked his long, blond hair out of his eyes with the practised flirtatious charm of a homecoming queen and glanced up at Daniel. "I'll come down and help you carry."

"No need of that," Carlos interjected, abruptly pulling off his bass and stepping between them. Paul Julian bobbed and feinted, as if trying to get around Carlos' spindly bulk, but Carlos moved to block him before he got to the door. For a few moments, the pair of them faced off like young bucks, before Carlos stared the younger man down. "I'll go. I'm bigger, I can carry more equipment," he pointed out, straightening his shoulders to make the most of the two or three inches between them in height.

Finally, the golden retriever backed off, rolling his eyes and blowing his hair petulantly. "Suit yourself, Carl."

"Carl _os_ ," snapped Carlos. "It's Car-loss."

The human fawn rolled back on his heels with a triumphant smirk, then started to edge towards the bass, as if it had been his plan to stay all along. "Sorry, Carl- _lows_ ," he said with exaggerated diction as he picked up the bass and started to thumb the bassline to a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song. If looks could have killed, Paul Julian Banks would have been a smouldering pile of ash with a only a few singed blond hairs and shreds of overstretched white nylon to show he had visited the fourth floor of the NYU Performing Arts Dorm.

But Carlos face was still a stormcloud as he and Daniel set off down the corridor together. Daniel, at least, recognised his friend's perturbed state of mind, and gently placed his hand on Carlos' arm, asking "Are you alright?"

"Fine," spat Carlos from between clenched teeth. Daniel's expression of disbelief was almost tangible. "I simply _loathe_ that man."

"Why? He's actually pretty alright... for a Prep," Daniel defended.

"He's a stuck-up, wealthy, arrogant, self-important, over-confident, self-regarding prick who has blustered himself into a position he has absolutely no right to, on the basis of his own stinking sense of entitlement," Carlos pontificated, oblivious to the fact that he might have been describing himself, in the eyes of a good part of the NYU student body.

"Are you sure its over-confidence you object to and not..." Daniel's soft voice left the rest of the sentiment dangling.

" _What_?"

"I see the way you look at him. I'm not blind." The voice was soft, but the words were cuttingly sharp.

Carlos was taken completely aback, stopping in his tracks to gaze at the smaller man, trying to read the expression on his face. "Look, the way that man dresses. It's _obscene_. Those shorts... they leave nothing to the imagination. No style, no class, no sense of mystery, just... that obscene _length_ of..." The deeply bemused expression on Daniel's face, his feathery pale-brown eyebrows arching up to form perfect semi-circles of not-buying-it, that stopped Carlos short. Gasping for air like a dying fish, Carlos opened and closed his mouth a few times, before trying another tack. "Why? Are you jealous?"

"Are _you_ jealous?" Daniel retorted, and started to walk off again.

Impatient, aroused and enflamed, Carlos reached out a long, spindly arm and seized Daniel around the wrist, jerking the smaller man around to face him. For a moment, they faced each other, nostrils flaring, breaths short, one pair of ebony-onyx eyes and one pair of golden-topaz eyes flashing with emotion in the too-bright neon light of the dormitory hallway.

Carlos broke first, finding himself consumed with a lust totally unlike any he had ever known, a reckless lust, the kind of lust that wrecked things - hearts, careers, bands - but he found himself drawn into those amber eyes, the intense and yet careful longing with which Kessler was studying him, the repressed emotion contained within those cupids bow lips, the tightness of his jaw when he swallowed, the way his whole body seemed to both tense up and yearn towards him, arching his back like iron filings drawn to a magnet. And so Carlos bent down, tangled his long, elegant fingers in that impossibly curly light-brown hair, and pulled Daniel's face up towards him, bringing his mouth down on him, hard, pushing his lips apart with his own and sucking his tongue into his mouth, drinking him in with a thirst that surprised them both. Pushing Daniel's thighs apart with his knees, forcing his way in between, he reached his arms down, cradled the lad's bony ass in his hands, then lifted him, bodily, crushing him against the wall as he ground his groin against the impossibly annoying boy, feeling his body yield like a ripe fruit, surrendering himself up to the kiss, to the caress, to the carnality of Carlos' need.


End file.
